My experience with HTML & CSS on Code Academy

To be perfectly honest, prior to this assignment I was scared of coding. Despite the fact that speakers have been saying that anyone can code and that it’s something that can be picked up even after college, I just couldn’t get past the fact that elaborate websites could be based on something simple. I was expecting to struggle through this assignment and probably end up Googling how to do certain coding tasks along the way. My pessimistic attitude toward coding results from the fact that I have never had any interaction with coding until this tutorial. In fact, until this semester, all my years of education have never covered this topic. Therefore this unfamiliar language that serves as the basis of every website I’ve ever visited was a bit intimidating to say the least.

To my surprise, Code Academy’s interface and step-by-step breakdown of instructions, was very easy to follow and I was able to finish over a full hour of stress-free coding without having to consult outside sources for help! The tutorial was effective because it left no room for failure since every single step was spelled out thoroughly and generous hints were provided. I found irony in this since a few speakers talked positively about failure as a motivator and a necessary process toward success. I’ve always preferred to be successful without prior failure, so I appreciated the success-oriented steps in the tutorial. However I’m sure that in more complex coding applications, failure would be pretty much inevitable.

I would definitely consider completing more of this tutorial on HTML& CSS or even trying other coding languages. This kind of valuable information is being taught in classes that people pay money for. The fact that Code Academy offers it for free is wonderful and I would encourage anyone interested to take advantage of it. I believe that novices to coding should definitely start with online tutorials like Code Academy, which offers the perfect balance of hands-on learning and hand-holding, resulting in an enlightened mind that is open to the many possibilities of coding.

This image shows the final step in HTML Basics, which is the last section I completed in the tutorial. In this step I used code to add and image, a hyperlink, and a hyperlink that was coded as an image.